Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

Sir Mal Fet writes "Chile has become the first country in the world to approve, by 100 votes in favor and one abstention, a law guaranteeing net neutrality (Google translation; Spanish original). The law states [submitter's translation]: 'No [ISP] can block, interfere with, discriminate, hinder, nor restrict the right of any Internet user of using, send, receive or offer any content, application, or legitimate service through the Internet, as well as any activity or legitimate use conducted through the Internet.' The law also has articles that force ISPs to provide parental control tools, clarify contracts, guarantee users' privacy and safety when surfing, and forbids them to restrict any liberty whatsoever. This is a major advance in the legislation of the country regarding the Web, when until last year almost anything that was performed online was considered illegal."

The "send" part eludes most U.S. discussions. Most major ISPs in the US block many outgoing ports to prevent you from running a server. What I do with my bandwidth is my business thank you very much, including serving up HTML.

There's a catch in the project tho', in one of the paragraphs says:
"May not limit the right of a user to enter or use any class of instruments, devices or appliances on the network, provided they are legal and that they do not damage or harm the network or service quality."
The last line can be used by ISPs saying that you're "damaging the network" with your computer.
Now we need to wait for the government to pass the law, and then enforce it.

"illegal" means "against the law", not "against the terms and service" set by the ISP. The law restricts the restrictions that can be imposed by ISPs. What you're saying is that the government could make a law saying that (eg) only a single PC can use an connection? So what?Or are you writing from a US perspective where the comms carriers own the government through lobbying?

I worry about this part of the law. The word legitimate will eventually be used by follow-up laws (or overzealous police) to exclude:

- Peer-2-Peer- Nudist websites- Photos of your kids- Hate websites like KKK.org- So-called hate site like Teaparty.org-- Downloading software to emulate ancient Atari or Sega or NES games- Sites that don't adhere to the new Internet Fairness Doctrine (don't present both sides of a story)- Downloading nude women that APPEAR to be younger than 18 (see Australia where 20-something women can't post photos, because they have A-sized breasts)- Downloading women who actually are younger than 18, but not committing any crime (such as topless photos from Brazilian or European beaches)- And so on.

I wouldn't get too paranoid. I think there's a similar clause in my terms of service, which is usually meant to say that I should use the Internet for "normal" traffic. If I'm instead trying to run a denial of service attack, sending malformed packets, attempting to hack or otherwise trying to disrupt the network or other servers, they have grounds to shut me off. I would imagine the law is worded so that they can continue to shut off users for those reasons, combined with privacy protection this seems like

And I love when someone nitpicks legislative language from an unofficial translation.

Considering your feelings, it's a good thing they don't actually use the word "legitimate" in the law. They use the Spanish word "legal". Now, IANACL (I am not a Chilean Lawyer), but I'm pretty sure "legal" means something like "allowed by law", or, more accurately, "not explicitly disallowed elsewhere in our laws".

Now, if you are concerned that they may, at a future date, make it illegal to use P2P (or, for you Spanish spe

You aren't paying for the bandwidth, you are paying for limited use of the bandwidth. You wouldn't like your bill if you had to pay the full cost of the bandwidth (yet most also complain at the mere mention of metered access). Also, I see many people demanding that ISPs block certain ports for abuse reasons (e.g. outbound SMTP to reduce spam, except of course, everybody wants all users but themselves blocked).

Paying taxes doesn't guarantee you 100% utilization of the highways; there are many times you wil

I'm trying to translate what you've said and I've failed so I'm going to offer my own translation.

You get net neutrality. If you fuck up and don't secure your machine and you get pwned the life guard makes you sit on the side of the pool for 15 minutes until you get your problem fixed. Then you get to jump back in the pool.

It's neutrality, but if you're doing harm by attacking others (by being pwned yourself) you get cut off all together and they can call you and tell you why.

So... "Don't filter me bro... except you can filter him because he's not doing something I like"? Seems kind of stupid to want to have full and complete access to your 65536/tcp ports to do with as you wish, but if someone happens to be running a botnet (intentionally or not), you're ok with having them filtered.

This is pretty much the entire reason these debates come up... one rule for you, one rule for the rest of us.

Listen in many countries we have laws protecting our freedom to do as we please. Yes, it's debatable rather we really have those freedoms or not, but that's beside the point.

One thing that we generally have laws about is our personal freedoms end at the point that we utilize them to restrict someone else's freedom.

If you're botnet infested you are out there doing denial of service attacks and trying to hack other systems into joining your bot net. At this point your freedom is being used in an attempt to restrict someone else's freedom.

That's what jails are for, or in this case being cut off until you fix it.

I see no "one rule for you, one for the rest of us" as you say. I see "don't attack someone else". Don't attack someone else is a pretty good rule I think.

But I use my personal web server as part of my network-centric cloud storage system -- I ssh into my machine and move files I need into public_html, then I can download them from my web browser. You got a problem with that?

I ran my own server off of SouthWestern Bell then later Time Warner for years with not a single spam message bounced off my server, nor issue from it. Seriously, hosting the occasional Fark photoshop pic and having a photo album hosted on my own equipment with passwords for my family along with a small vanity site, where's the problem with that? I did it for years and find it nearly impossible to do now because of people with your mindset.

I know a lot of people abuse it and run porn sites and push malware, but I shouldn't have to pay the price for them.

No, I don't work for Comcast. My work would be much less popular with the Slashdot community, but I can't really discuss it anyway. But, just to play devil's advocate, if, say, port 80 traffic were completely unfettered in a bi-directional manner and incomming connections were allowed without a previously established outgoing connection, chances are quite high that would be abused by malware authors for command-and-control and botnet node intercommunication. I don't think that's much of a stretch at all,

Cut off infected users. ISP's outside of the US do it, ISPs in the US ignore you if you're under constant siege from one of their users, I know, I sent emails with log info and made phone calls etc...

Yes, some botnets do use port 80 for that. Cut the morons off and make them get their stuff fixed. I've been on the web since 97 and never been pwned into a botnet on one of my machines. I have fixed other peoples. You can't tell me it's outlandish to expect people not to get pwned on a regular

Or what about an user-configurable firewall at the ISP? Have it block port 80 by default, but any user who wants to use it can simply go to the web site and enable the port.

Exactly.

That's what my ISP does (in Australia). You can run all the servers you want with them. It's your connection. But they do want you to explicitly turn it on. I think that is a Good Thing (TM), especially for port 25.

"if, say, port 80 traffic were completely unfettered in a bi-directional manner and incomming connections were allowed without a previously established outgoing connection, chances are quite high that would be abused by malware authors for command-and-control and botnet node intercommunication."

Still *my* problem, neither yours nor the ISP's.

"I don't think that's much of a stretch at all, and its not as if the typical end user is going to know or care to secure their node."

Why he should? What are the consecuences of his malpractices? If you fuck it up you pay for the mop seems a sensible policy. But even then, still my f* problem, neither yours nor the ISP's.

Uh, no. Your individual computer getting infected might be your problem - 2 million other retards getting infected and becoming part of the same botnet is a much bigger, much different problem. Just like you personally not getting vaccinated for a highly contagious disease is mainly your problem, but if a significant portion of the population refuses vaccination it becomes a societal problem.

I don't think that's much of a stretch at all, and its not as if the typical end user is going to know or care to secure their node.

The typical end user will need to forward the port on their standard dlink/linksys/walmart router. Not to mention, your computer won't respond on that port without something running that requires the port (so if you aren't hosting anything you can't be hit on that port anyways). Windows has had a firewall built into their OS for a long time now.

So do what my ISP does (Australian, not US). By default, ports 80 and 25 are blocked. If I want to open them, I log into my ISP, hit up my control panel, and turn off filtering. I've been running my own servers on my Internode connection for years.

This is one of the most intelligent replies I've seen today. I have have absolutely no problem with this. Those of us like me who want their ports can get them without sitting on hold with morons who don't know what ports are while getting passed around to 12 different departments and getting nowhere can just flick a switch. Those who don't know what a port is probably don't know the control panels there, or if they do don't know what a port is so they figure it's safer not to mess with it if they don't

I was too. I set my nat device to forward port 80, along with very specific other ports, to the machine(s) I wanted them to go to. Pretty secure, I only had the ports I needed active on the machine doing the serving, and on top of that the NAT device caught any ports other than the ones I purposely forwarded.

BTW - a NAT device is sort of a natural firewall. It's not 100% effective but it's a heck of a lot safer than just sticking a Windows 98 box out on the bare web. Your NAT device argument goes more for supporting my side of the argument than the block it crowds.

I love how a second world nation is further ahead with ensuring the freedoms of its people then the United States. How about we just add an amendment to the constitution that replaces all references of "people" to "corporations".

To the person who moderated PP troll: Chilean isn't closely linked to NATO (First World) or the Warsaw Pact (Second World), and is by definition a Third World country. The designation is political, not economic.

From the Nixon administration through the first half of Bush 41's term, Chile had Augusto Pinochet, a military dictator. They might tend to look at freedom with slightly less jaded eyes than Americans who have had it "too good for too long." Small things like that can tend to have major effects on perspective. Just saying.

Most of the rest of the world can already say "been there, done that." We haven't fought foreign troops on US soil since 1815, except a brief issue in the Aleutian Islands during WWII. Most of Europe was taken over by the Nazis and/or their allies (for the sake of argument, we'll include Franco even though this isn't strictly true... he did tolerate and leverage Primo de Rivera well after he was killed by Republicans), or the Soviet Union. Soviet Communism controlled the Eastern Bloc and Central Asia, w

^.^Nice you point this topic. It is funny how this convo has turned up in a US's self talking..as usual. Please, i do not mean any offense with this, but it is just this thinking which kind of confuse me.
I`m chilean. I have been in the states and i should say in many southamerican countries and it is so not like you imagine the rest of the world, specially southamerican countries. Why? because you live in fear.
It is true that we had Pinochet 40 years ago, painful period of our lives, but eventhough we do not forget we can still forgive and start over. I`m not saying that everything is good, just saying that we move on....
I as going to say many things, but i think you wont read them...
While in US i was in a really nice place, there werent even afroamerican people, just native americans, still the way of comunicating with others was really different. I was treated like a princess, really good, and like if anything could happen to me at any moment (i should say overprotected since i was without my family there but i wasnt underage ) "Do not get out alone because someone can kidnap you" "Do not greet someone you dont know coz they can be a pervert or u wont be greeted back" "do not conect to internet in the pool of the place because someone can get into ur files through internet and get dome personal info from your computer" etc... i couldnt eve go to the club alone coz someone coul "put sth on my drinks" and do anything. It is a general fear in people that you cant see in any southamerican countries [excepting when u are a tourist in Favelas/brasil or amazonas/venezuela-colombia]. But in the rest of countries like Chile, argentina, peru, etc,you normally see children late at night playing, or in summer time people jst go to the beach at nigth and children, teenagers and people in general can walk at any time in the cities, go to dowtown alone, travel by public transportation from one city to another, or from home to the inner city or to anywhere without any problems... ["Never take a bus in the US" is what Americans told me]
So, if we talk about freedom, i think that you should start thinking what "real" freedom is.
I went backpacking last february with my best friend down to the south, 20 days in which we walked in the road, meet people, hitchhike from truck drivers to horse carts... and we finish our trip without even falling into the ground once. THAT isFREEDOM and safety.
What we are getting with this new law is stating the bases to also give more security to people as well. After this law is completely updated and applied there will be improvements to it, such as grooming hunting, etc. Perhaps we are not as advance as US and not as fast developed since both US and Chile are 200 indepent countries, (We r kind of slow) but still we are trying to do our best. (Thanks Daemon)
Sorry my poor english..it`s been a while since i dont practice writing or speaking.

Read from the bottom up for chronological order, which goes roughly like this:

Pre election: Allende may align himself with the Communists, so prepare for divestment and possible action if he's elected. We cannot tolerate any example of an OAS country independent and working with Russia or Cuba, or in any way harming US interests.

Post election: Now that Allende has been elected, here are the options for getting rid of him. Propaganda campaigns have alrea

We've got fairly sane copyright legislation from Brazil recently too. South America has been tooling under European and then American hegemony ever since the Spanish conquistadors. Brazil was the country that ensured sane prices for aids medications throughout the world by threatening to break American patents. China otoh does extreme long term harm by paying lip service while ignoring all the content. We'll all have better lives if South American, India, and Eastern Europe replace China for any given e

I'm telling you, there's a real progressive wind blowing through South America. Brazil, Chile, Argentina and others are moving to the Left and having great success. There economies are growing and it's not just the rich that are doing better. Socially, they've got a long way to go, but at least they're moving in the right direction, using the European socialist model as a starting point, not an end in itself.

We're going to read a lot in the coming few years about the success stories in the Southern Hemisphere. They're going to be a shining example for what free societies can look like in the 21st century: prosperous, fair and free.

Even Hugo Chavez, who has gone off the rails as is common among very strong politicians who have great success, did a great deal of good for his country before he got drunk on power. But he'll be gone soon and there's a healthy crop of decent leaders waiting to take over.

Don't think for a second that the financial and social successes in South America don't scare the hell out of the USA.

i'm chilean, chile isn't in the way of a welfare state (european model) that you are saying, currently we are beeing driven by a right goverment with strong individualist values ( i am fine with that) , argentina has big BIG problem on their laws bu brazil you're right they seems to be doing OK

also mother is from venezuela , i had lived there for 6 months and i can tell you, chavez is a monkey, and thes rest of the politicians ain't any better, they don't have electricity even for the hospital , not even t

You can agree or disagree with Chavez, but he's not "drunk on power". He's been pushing for years now to create a system and culture of direct democracy. Indeed, the greatest threat to his socialist program is how much it is still "his" program, rather than a popular ("grass-roots") one, and Chavez knows it.

I'm fully invested in Brazil - I'm Brazilian and my company - the single asset I have - is here:)

South America is not threat for the US because it's been largely an irrelevant continent for the last two decades. This is first year of high GDP growth (for the last two decades) in Brazil - and the year with highest current account deficit. Also, the smallest federal government budget surplus - if you take in account investments and debt payments it's a deficit, actually.

"guarantee users' privacy and safety when surfing, and forbids them to restrict any liberty whatsoever"

These two conflict. establishing privacy and safety require the users behavior and software be carefully configured and updated, and that impedes on ones liberty to have absolute control over their own behavior and property.

"guarantee users' privacy and safety when surfing, and forbids them to restrict any liberty whatsoever"

These two conflict. establishing privacy and safety require the users behavior and software be carefully configured and updated, and that impedes on ones liberty to have absolute control over their own behavior and property.

It probably means the ISP must not do anything to compromise the privacy and safety of the users. Not much can be done about the users being directly compromised. This is going to be a

'No [one] can block, interfere with, discriminate, hinder, nor restrict the right of any Internet user of using, send, receive or offer any content, application, or legitimate service through the Internet, as well as any activity or legitimate use conducted through the Internet.

(emphasis mine)

It is basically sayingNo one can block/interfere/hinder/restrict anyone from using/sending/receiving/offering any content/application/legitimate-service/any-activity/

when someone tries to block child pornography, for example, you are not witnessing some horrible slippery slope to fascism. no, really. to believe so is to be a hysterical twit and absolutely no credit whatsoever to an authentic fight for freedom

"Anybody else see the problem here?"

no, not at all. are you a paranoid schizophrenic?

the fight for freedom must be patient, shrewd, and wise. not a bunch of halfcocked lightweights spazzing out at every wisp of smoke

>>>when someone tries to block child pornography, for example, you are not witnessing some horrible slippery slope to fascism

(1) Possession of children having sex should be no more illegal than possession of murdered people. You did not commit the crime. The molester or murderer is the one who committed the crime and should be arrested, not you for mere possession of an image.

(2) Neither should parents be arrested for posting photos of their family trip to the nudist or topless beach. But it has

Yes as I said in a previous post, the word "legitimate" will eventually be used by follow-up laws (or overzealous police)(or asshole ISPs to exclude:

- Sites that don't adhere to the new Internet Fairness Doctrine (both sides of a story), Downloading nude women that APPEAR to be younger than 18 (see Australia where 20-something women can't post photos, because they have A-sized breasts), Downloading women who actually are younger than 18, but not committing any crime (such as topless photos from Brazilian or

The government can run 50-fiber bundles under all the streets, and then lease each of those lines to a different company. The customers would be able to choose among multiple ISPs: Comcast, Cox, Time-warner, AppleTV, Verizon, Virgin, Mom&Pop Cable, whatever. If one ISP sucks or blocks a website you want, just switch to a different ISP. You'd have upto 50 to choose from.

Why would 50 ISPs enter a small rural or suburban market of say 500 households - something to be split 50 ways?

"No [ISP] can block... legitimate use conducted through the Internet."
Anybody else see the problem here?

No... Do you seriously expect net neutrality laws to state that ISPs may not block illegal activities ?
If so, wouldn't it make more sense to make the illegal activities legal...
Note: I don't see how you can define p2p services as illegal, lot of legitimate content is distributed using p2p... If that's what you're worried about..

I looked at the translation of the bill and it appears to be a one page bill. I only skimmed it, but I can support such a bill. There's no place to hide things in it. Unlike the "net neutrality" bills that have been introduced in the U.S. Congress.

It's more like 2.5 pages (official text in Spanish [camara.cl] - the document is 4 pages, but there's a lot of padding and some formalities at either end) but your point stands. The U.S. legislative system is insane.

The problem is that the U.S. legislative system isn't insane. They write the bills the way they do in order to hide stuff. The worst part is that there is stuff in most bills that even the guy who introduces it doesn't know is in there. And some of the stuff that is hidden from him, he would oppose if he knew it was there.

The problem with our legislative system is that a good deal of our bills are diffs to laws that already exist. Any bill that deals with taxes almost certainly is a diff to the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.

When people complain about the thousand page bills that come out of committee, the size is due to a good deal of the bill striking other provisions and re-designating paragraphs or other sections.

That's a small reason why our processes are so opaque. Could you imagine if Linux Kernel updates were only r

So you are saying that the people in areas with 1-2 ISPs will be able to switch to a different ISP that doesn't restrict traffic? Have you ever noticed how when one gas station raises their prices, the one directly across the street raises theirs to the same? Its not collusion but its price fixing. ISPs will do the same exact thing. Comcast goes, hey Wave Broadband is filtering out Torrents, we are gonna do it too to save money, people can complain but where they gonna go?

Totally agreed. Any of you foolish libertarians who believe in "free markets" should recognize that Telecom/Cable has basically never been "free". It's been a (somewhat regulated) monopoly at local levels since pretty much day one. Those who would revoke those regulations without forcing open the market (ie, forcing resale of bandwidth/service etc) are basically allowing the telecoms to have their cake and eat it too. Net Neutrality is an attempt at strengthening reg

So, you're saying that the solution to having too much regulation in a market, (telcom) is to install more regulation? How progressive of you.

No, the problem with not enough competition in the market is to create more. Remember: a completely unregulated market will tend to coalesce into a monopoly [wikipedia.org] or cartel fairly shortly. The goal of regulation is to keep the markets competitive. You know, you "free market" zealots should try going to somewhere that has no regulation whatsoever (like say, Sierra Leone)

If you don't understand why more gas companies can't enter the market, then god help you. Most gas companies make money hand over fist, moreso then other markets, so you would think more gas companies would be sprouting up all the time until they were equal to what other markets make in profits.

I know that most people here are internet techies, but why do most of you not understand that net neutrality is a BAD thing.

Because we're actual techies, i.e. people who pay attention to what's actually going on in the tech world, as opposed to people who have swallowed the corporate "we have to be able to abuse our customers so we can provide service for our customers!" propaganda hook, line, and sinker.

Net neutrality doesn't prevent charging based on usage (which is what they should be doing). Note that that is different than charging based on sites accessed or protocols used. ISPs should not be degrading P2P traffic, or restricting access to sites, what they should be doing is charging users based on their consumption.

If net neutrality was implemented it WILL WITH CERTAINTY increase internet costs for all users

Did it ever occur to you that some of us would be willing to pay more for untampered internet?

And it's not just about peer2peer tampering. It's about all traffic shaping - streaming videos, playing video games, etc. Some of us would like to have unrestricted access. We already put up with the bandwidth issues during high traffic times - but you'll still be shaped in low traffic times. (Which, we might add, there is more low and mid-low traffic times then there are high and mid-high traffic times).

You mention how Net Neutrality will offer more choices (those with tampering and those without). Currently, for most people, there are two options, Suck and suck harder.

The problem is not neutrality. The problem is the monopoly (or duopoly) that government granted these businesses. It's equivalent to if government suddenly announced, "You will no longer have a choice in grocery stores. Only Comcast Grocery will be allowed to operate within this city." Don't be surprised if the cost of food doubles or even triples as a result (no instantly but over a time).

I remember when Comcast was $30. That wasn't great but it was reasonable. Now it would cost me $80 ($85 w

I don't know where you live, but in Ohio I'm reasonably sure cities are not allowed to sign exclusive franchises with a particular vendor.

I recall from my time on the technology advisory board in Fairborn, OH that our franchise agreement was not exclusive and at no time was it ever exclusive. Anyone, if they saw fit, could offer cable television, Internet access, etc. Guess how many cable companies we had? One. No one wanted to put in tons of money in infrastructure to compete against an already entrenc

With net neutrality you only have one option for internet access: untampered internet. With net neutrality you will have many options, some with peer2peer tampering some without.

Odd, right now, most of the country has many options for internet access, all heavily tampered with. Almost all the exceptions I've seen have been business class service, and even some of those are heavily tampered with. And in many places, you can't get business class service at a residence. Show me all those options and I'll st

I'm of the opinion one of the biggest problems with 1st world elections is popular vote. Instead of voting for the person you want you should get a stack of votes of varying point values to drop on multiple candidates you like the best (can't go all on 1) that way you come up with a vote against system. If voters for person A hate person B and voters for person B hate person A, yet nobody really hates C even though he's not really in the spotlight, he has a better chance of winning that way. The rabid di

Chile isn't exactly a have-not or third world country. Its HDI ranking is just a touch below G8 average; and its GINI is one slot below the US, admittedly three slots below the "civilized world", as it were.

I think, to a degree, the latin influence is slightly more 'let it be' than the anglo-germanic 'let it be as I say'. Ireland is always the spoiler with its 'aye, we'll do that' which really means 'if it makes you shut up, we'll agree and never get around to it'.....

I'm not sure that I agree that direct legislation is the right answer here, but it's hard to deny that the average person doesn't have the same ability to choose providers of broadband hard-wired Internet access as they do to choose gas stations, supermarkets, or brands of automobile.

If the government really wants to see innovation and choice in customer access to the Internet/Voice and Video communica

1. the cable companies have government-mandated local monopolies; there is no choice available.2. Just because access to the internet in the US is a negative right, doesn't mean it has to stay the way. Changing times requires changes in the law, otherwise we could have stuck with the book of Leviticus and left it at that.

Your packets arrive at the same time as any other service, not "belling" p2p at set times.
No slowing, hidden caps on some ports ect.
Privacy would protect your usage logs, name, maybe data in transit from a Google like collection and storage when exposed.
You have the liberty to not use the net, use a consumer account, server quality account or any other isp offering at any price you like with any fine print.
Just your details are safe from 3rd parties, your packets will not be slowed.